


the right idea

by silentghosts



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Failing to bang away your feelings, M/M, Pining, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 03:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13309047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentghosts/pseuds/silentghosts
Summary: It started with a goal song, well actually it started at training camp in freshman year but really it started with a goal song.





	the right idea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helveticaneue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helveticaneue/gifts).



> You know when you text several your friends being like... is this rare pair too rare and all of them text back say yes. Well this is this fic. 
> 
> For helveticaneue who asked for USA or Canada and is hopefully happy with this mess of both. You made the mistake of saying "I would love to read about the friendships/relationships of people who are on the same team who get broken up by world juniors, so Dante Fabbro and his BU teammate" so here is 5k of Dante being sad, trying to bang away his feelings, and ultimately giving in.
> 
> This fic wouldn't exist without A who I swear to god must have written half of it, cheerleading me through the other half and lovingly chirped my inability to use a single comma the entire way.

It starts with a goal song.

Well actually it starts with training camp freshman year but more on that later.

Usually the captain picks the goal song. Dylan did it last year, storming into the locker room and declaring it ‘We Dem Boyz’ and daring anyone to tell him no. After all, they had won a medal with it before, the second of the McDavid years, so it had to be good luck, right?

It wasn’t.

Last year Dylan chose the song and Mat and Chabby nodded in the background and that was it, done. But with the absence of any real captain come Christmas morning, texts were sent and a players only meeting was scheduled for after lunch.

Attendance: Mandatory.

 

 

It’s Dillon that brings the playlist loaded up with the ‘best of the best’ as they sprawl around the C/Kales’ hotel room and press play.  
It’s not like they haven’t been trying to find a song, the guys all taking turns to man the bus sound system on trips to the rink, but they had all just kind of assumed they would have a leadership group by now.

  
Dante’s staring at the ceiling when it comes on, head resting against Taylor's thigh where he's sitting on the bed behind him. The laughter almost gets shocked from his system.

  
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mutters while half the room bursts into laughter, singing along to varying degrees of success, the other half groaning in some type of aborted protest, smothering their giggles in each others shoulders.

  
“Really, the fucking BU song?” Cale laughs, lobbing a sock across the room in Dante's general direction. Mikey squawks,like a fucking bird when it hits him instead.

  
“Hey, don't look at me, I’m not the one that put it on there.” Dante says, sitting up and raising his hands in mock surrender. He kinda likes it, he won't admit it of course. Being an college boy in Canada was tough, but the idea of being able to carry a little bit of Boston on the ice with him here was nice. “It’s a good song, okay.” he adds defensively, quieter this time despite the way its seems to echo around the room, soaking in the silence.

  
“I like it,” Mikey pipes up from besides Taylor. “It’s fucking catchy.”

  
There are some murmurs of agreement and the odd chuckle, but soon enough they move on and Dante lets his head fall back against Taylor's leg again, trying not to think about how silent the BU group chat has been for the past week. The battle lines had clearly drawn with Dante on the other side. He tries not to think about how lonely it feels and focuses on Taylor’s warmth instead.

 

 

The thing they don't tell you about being a Canadian boy at BU is how everyone already knows each other come first day of training camp. Even though he’s one of nine freshmen, it’s kind of hard to tell who the other new guys in the room are. The NTDP boys stick to each other like glue and the rest of the USHL boys are not much better, already familiar with each other from training camps and national tourneys since they were kids. There are only three Canadians. Four, if Dante counts himself, but they're all older, not guys he knows. Boston’s a long way from British Columbia and it’s like he can feel every single mile as he skates up to Hicks, hesitantly fist bumps him and tries to focus on the hockey. After all, that’s what he's here for. That’s all that matters.

 

 

It’s a knock on the door followed by a muffled bang that finally gets Dante to stop staring at the ceiling. Jake had never came back to the room after the team meeting, fucking off somewhere with Cal and a bunch of the Dub boys. Since he’s from BC, Dante’s a Dub boy in spirit for international competitions, but in reality, he’s usually alone in his room when it comes time for the team to split into regional factions, not really fitting anywhere. At least last year he had Tyson. This year, he’s not sure who he has. Another knock cuts through his angsting pulling himself upright as the door frame rattles.

  
“Fabs, let us the fuck in,” Mikey yells right as Dante gets his hand on the door handle, pulling it open as the pair of them tumble into his room. Taylor almost takes him out with an elbow on the way down.

  
“What the fuck,” is what Dante finally manages to say once the door is closed and two O boys look up at him with sheepish eyes. There seems to be a stereotype for every league: the W, the Q, the college kids. The O is just fucking weird, everyone coming out of it a little too close for comfort and not a single one of them with respectable boundaries.

  
“You looked sad earlier” Mikey stated. Zero fucking tact as always. Taylor punches him in the arm, muttering, “We had a fucking plan, you moron,” as Dante struggles not to roll his eyes.

  
Mikey laughs, rolling onto his side like this is a scene in fucking Titanic or something.

  
His shirt is riding up, and Dante’s eyes are drawn to the sliver of bare skin along his hip, just above his team issued track-pants.

“Fine,Taylor,” he huffs, before a ridiculously sleazy grin plasters itself across his face. “Hey Fabs, you looked a little sad earlier,” he drawls, looking up through his lashes at Dante. “Wanna fuck?”

 

 

The first time Dante met Jake Oettinger, they were 16 and at opposite ends of a handshake line. They would meet again and again, at Fort St. John, Grand Forks, Plymouth, at tournaments and exhibition games dotted across North America again and again. Jake wasn’t important then, just another face on the opposite side of the redline.

  
The first time Dante actually met Jake was at Agganis, almost two years later. The season doesn’t start for another two and a half months, but Coach Quinn had invited all the freshmen up at the beginning of July for a sort of informal rookie camp, the nine of them plus the leadership group, the Massachusetts guys, and some of the other upperclassmen hanging around for the summer.

  
All in all, most of the team is there, and Dante’s pretty overwhelmed. The first practice is disjointed, most of the freshman jittery and the upperclassmen unsurprisingly not a calming enough presence to make up for all the nervous energy. When they get off the ice, Doyle, brand new C on his jersey, tells the team to sit with someone they’ve never played with before at lunch and learn three facts about them. Guess he’s taking the whole team bonding thing seriously.

  
For the first time, Dante feels like maybe, maybe his position is the best one to be in as he looks at the clump of NTDP boys, their eyes all darting around the room as they try and search out their linemates from today's session as if none of them have ever been separated before. They look like a bunch of lost puppies. Dante ignores the fact that in this metaphor, he’s probably the lone wolf. In the middle of it all is a tuft of brown hair standing a good few inches above everyone else. Their eyes meet over the heads of everyone around them. Oettinger’s hand is halfway through his hair as he offers Dante a sheepish smile and Dante couldn’t help but grin back, at the ridiculousness of it all. It’s the first moment when he starts to feel settled, like this rink, these boys, might feel like his someday.

 

“Okay but in all seriousness the song should be Hey Baby,” is the first thing Mikey says after, his hair all sex rumbled and vaguely gross, Taylor’s arm stretched across his chest where he lay sleeping on the other side of the bed.

  
It was a tight squeeze, three hockey players in a twin size bed, but there have been worse setups. Dante had been personally involved in worse setups. Squeezing any more than one person into the beds in the dorms was a challenge, even if they were “twin XL” instead of twins.  
Dante frowns, rolling over to look out the window, aggressively avoiding Mikey's face, awash with pity. “Shut it, McLeod. It was a dumb idea anyway,” he snaps. They were Team Canada. They could do better than stealing an NCAA win song. They were a team that won gold to hip hop and rap, to songs like We Dem Boyz and Big Rings, not to your second cousin’s mum’s pick five wines in at a wedding. Dante ignores the small part of him that protested him badmouthing Hey Baby, even in his head.

  
“Hey,” Taylor says, his voice all scratchy in a way that definitely doesn’t make Dante shiver. The bed shifts and a solid weight settles on top of Dante. “Shut up, okay, it’s a good song. It made me laugh, and I think we could all used a little of that, eh?”

  
Dante huffs, all the fight deflating out of him as Mikey tucks himself up against Dante’s back, his hand coming up to stroke through his hair.

  
“Look, we're not going to make you talk about it, but Fabs, you deserve to be happy,” Mikey says quietly, placing a kiss against the base of Dante's skull. “And you know if you ever do actually want to like, talk about whatever, or whoever, it is, we’re here for you, bud. Brothers for life and all that,” Taylor adds, shifting in an attempt to make himself more comfortable. His weight settles on top of Dante like a blanket.

  
“And of course, if you just want to not think about it and bang some more instead… you know where our door is.” Mikey winks exaggeratedly and laughs, rolling out of the way as Taylor tries to punch him in the arm once more.

Eventually they settle back down, Dante curled against Taylor’s chest, Mikey draped across his back like a lanky blonde octopus.  
“I just miss them”. It feels like swallowing broken glass when he says it, quiet in the darkness of the room, the blinds long since pulled down. The I miss him goes unsaid as he buries his face further into Taylor's neck, swallowing the hiccuped sobs that threaten to overcome him.

 

They’re both gone when he wake ups an hour or so later, Jake shaking his shoulder shoulder, murmuring that it’s time for team dinner.  
“Nice hickey by the way,” he laughs as Dante hurries to get dressed, pulling his sweatpants on. His hand rubs absentmindedly across the growing bruise on his clavicle.

  
“Shut it Bean, like you have room to talk,” Dante says without any real venom. It is what it is, and judging by what he can see in the mirror one of those two boys is a fucking vampire. There are teeth marks running up and down his torso. Possessive fuckers. He pushes down the part of him that likes feeling claimed, likes that the mark means he belongs, at least with them, at least for now.

  
“I’m going to fucking kill the p-” Dante freezes, fingers still pressed against his clavicle, the sharp sting adding just a little bit of extra bite to the memory of how it got there. Last year, it’s not like Taylor and Mikey weren’t public about their thing, more so that they didn’t realise it was a Thing until they had silver medals around their necks and it was too late to do anything but try not to feel like the medals were choking them and hug each other goodbye. But still it wasn’t something that got talked about, something that was widely known outside their little groups.

  
“Dude, chill.” Jake sighed, moving across the room to give him a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. “Raddy caught up me in the rec room, blushing pretty much up to his ears to let me know that I should wake you up before dinner since he had to run an errand.”

  
“It’s not,” he trails off, unsure how he was planning on ending that sentence. Not like that, not something he’s ready to analyze, not permanent...

  
Jake cuts off his train of thought. “Hey Fabs, doesn’t matter. As long as you happy, you know.”

  
Jake pauses, a grin spreading across his face knocking Dante softly in the shoulder as he says, “Also as long as they don’t give you another lower-”.

  
Dante shoves him before he can finish his terrible joke. It’s too soon to be joking about injuries, and definitely none of Jake’s business what Taylor and Mikey may or may not be doing with his lower body. Jake gets him in a headlock and suddenly they’re wrestling, dinner forgotten for the moment.

 

 

There only 3 games into the season but god there so good, flying up the ice at Agganis seems as easy as breathing, it feels like Dante has been skating there his entire life already. The sound of the puck hitting the net, the goal horn going off had always been one of Dante’s favourite sounds, hearing it in their home opener, from a shot off his stick only made it that much better. And Jake. Fucking Jake in net shutting everything down when they practically handed Colgate nine fucking power play opportunities. Jake stopping the penalty shot. Jake who is so good on the ice, calm and in control and fucking scary sometimes, that goalie intensity that shouldn’t be hot but really, really is. Dante can’t help himself. He falls in love with Jake’s hockey easily, but falling in love with Jake isn’t that much harder.

 

 

The goal horn goes off for the first time and Dante can’t stop himself from grinning, his heart in his throat. Taylor skates past in the fly-by, his eyes barely leaving Dante’s until he has no option but to, and when Dante finally brings himself to look, Mikey’s staring at him too, with some ridiculous face that is somehow equal parts proud and fond.  
“Oh my god,” Jake mouths at him, 3 people down the bench when the finally all settle back down because yeah, they did that. They changed the goal song for him.

 

 

“So, scouting report, your boy Oettinger,” Taylor says two days later, the three of them yet again crammed into another twin bed in what is rapidly becoming a habit.

  
“He’s not my boy,” Dante sighs, praying to any and every god that might be listening neither of them chose this moment to be emotionally perceptive. “He’s really strong on the glove side, quick as fucking lightning, did the outdoor thing with us last year at Fenway and was a fucking rock.” Dante tries to stick to just the facts and hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s bragging.They might be on opposite sides right now, but for 40 games a year, Jake is his goalie, and he’s fucking incredible at it.

  
“So what you’re saying is that he’s good,” Mikey says and Dante can’t help but laugh because Jake is better than good, he's fucking phenomenal but that's not what anyone want to hear right now, so he lets the room lapse back into a comfortable silence instead the air going quiet around them.

  
“How you holding up anyway, Fabs,” Taylor eventually asks, the words feeling weighted, as if Taylor had been carrying them around for a while, unable to work out how to broach the subject.

  
“I’m excited, like it’s going to be great playing outdoors but... they’re my boys.” he shrugs, its just the way it is, last year was like an acceptance crash course and now, its just another game, they're just another team. Its the way he has to think to get by, to not crumble under the pressure of it all.

  
“I get that. You’re going to be okay, right? None of them being too shitty about it?” Taylor squeezes his shoulder

  
“To be shitty they would have to text.” Dante doesn’t mean for it to sound bitter, doesn’t mean to make it feel cruel but that’s the way it sounds, the words coming out like a live wire crackling and angry.

  
“What.” Mikey asks, shocked.

  
Dante shrugs again, he doesn’t know what to say “Battle lines, boys, no crossing into enemy territory mid-tourney.” he eventually tries to joke but it falls flat, sounding hollow even to his own ears.

  
“But, like...”

  
“I don’t know, they did it last year as well, the national team kids, and it worked, so you can’t exactly blame them.” Some days he wants to, his phone heavy in his pocket, way more silent than usual. Wants to call them and scream for making him feel like this, but he knows it’s not about him. It’s about hockey and about winning. Hell, he gets it more than any of them. He needs to win this and make up for what should have been gold last year but wasn’t. Selfishly, he wishes Jake was above all the superstition, but he knows it matters to Jake just as much as it matters to the rest of the boys, especially since Jake didn’t get to play a minute of the tournament last year. Still, he misses them, and he can’t help that it hurts a little not knowing whether they’re missing him too.

 

 

Dante barely makes it to the locker room when his phone lights up with alerts, buzzing almost non-stop in the shelf above his locker. It didn’t take a genius to work out who the texts were from, and Dante grabs it from the shelf, thumb incessantly pressing against the off button in a will to make the noise stop. Everyone else is trudging back into the room now, Mat and Chabby leaning against each other like the only thing holding them up is each other, Carter looking smaller than ever in his gear as if he were trying to curl into an imaginary turtle shell, Mikey and Taylor resolutely avoiding eye contact. Then Dylan, Dylan without a single emotion on his face despite the tear tracts running down it, Dylan who maybe deserved this more than anyone, the sounds of cheers still echoing down the hallway a backing track as he marched across the room and delicately laid his medal down on his bench as if it was something precious before stripping his gear.  
It feels like the calm before the storm for a second before his phone buzzes one last time, a seemingly never-ending strings of America flag emojis in the group chat the last thing Dante sees before the screen finally, blessedly goes dark.

 

 

They lose to the USA again. It shouldn’t hurt as much the second time but it does.

 

 

“Fuck, man, you were a fucking wall out there, shit,” the words seem to be tumbling out of Dante’s mouth looking up at Jake, his eyes crinkling and he grins and tips their helmets together. Dante can’t help thinking that Jake looks beautiful like this, smudged eyeblack, flushed cheeks, and all.

  
“You weren’t so bad either, Fabs,” Jake laughs, giddy, and Dante can’t imagine not wanting to do this, be here for the rest of his life.

 

“You coming out or are you just going to sit there with your head in your phone,” Dante chirps lightly, sliding into the empty bus seat next to Jake.

  
“Oh, coming out for sure, I’m just texting Wolls,” Jake muttered, barely looking up from his phone, fingers moving across it at a ridiculous rate.

  
“Course,” Dante says, ignoring the way it makes his stomach, drop his fingers clenching mindlessly on the fabric of his track pants. He stares out the window, the frigid Boston air feeling like it’s sleeping under his skin.

 

 

It’s New Year’s Eve when it all falls to pieces, stuck in the confines of the hotel after team management told them to have a low key evening and get prepped for the finals. There's a TV on in the rec room, and most of them lie scattered around idly watching the countdown as they get close to midnight. Jake mans ping pong table set up at the back of the room, Drake continually trying to take him down.

  
Dante’s got his head pillowed in Taylor’s lap, his fingers brushing through his hair as Dante zones in and out, Mikey pressed up against Taylor’s other side.

  
“Mikey, stop,” Taylor mutters as Dante opens his eyes, twisting his head to see what’s happening.

  
“Mmmh, but what if I don’t want to,” Mikey mumbles, continuing to push his nose against Taylor’s collarbone. Dante can't help but bring his hand up to his now fading bruise in the same spot on his own chest.

  
“Clouder, don’t start something you aren’t prepared to finish”. It’s so undeniably fond that it makes Dante’s heart clench, the easy familiarity with which they move and act around each other.

  
“Come on, Tay,” Mikey whispers, and Dante almost feels like he's eavesdropping on some private moment. He fights the urge to roll away from them, to get up and go an find Jake, anything but stay. “Look, Dante wants to leave.”

  
That's the straw the breaks it, the three of them getting up as quietly as they can, not even trying to be subtle about it as they make it to the hallway. Mikey tugs at Taylor’s shirt with one hand, the other wrapped possessively around Dante’s wrist as he backs the pair of them towards his room.

 

They’ve just made it to Mikey’s room when it happens, Taylor slamming him into the door, his shirt already disposed of.

  
“Fuck, Jake,” Dante moans against Taylor’s mouth, and suddenly you could hear a pin drop, Mikey’s hand dropping from his where it was clutching his hip as a single oh escapes his mouth.

  
“I’ve gotta, I need to,” Dante's scrambling out from where Taylor had him pinned, his heart beating out of his chest like he just skated a double shift, his cheeks aflame because god, why did he have to say that? It’s not like he didn’t know that his feelings for Jake weren’t exactly platonic anymore. Fuck, he absolutely did, but this is definitely the first time it has come out like this and he’s fucking mortified. Beyond the embarrassment, though, he just misses and misses and the group chat is still silent and it’s New Year’s Eve and it doesn’t matter that tomorrow he starts playing for redemption, at this point there is nowhere else he wants to be less. He can feel himself spiraling, his chest getting tight and breath coming faster, and he can’t get out of the room fast enough.

  
“Hey, Fabs, hey,” Taylor’s saying and Dante can barely hear it above the blood rushing in his ears, his hands shaking as he brings them up to scrub at his eyes.

  
“You’re alright, we’ve got you,” he keeps whispering as he guides Dante towards the bed. He breathes in unevenly, then out, then in, then out again, letting Mikey and Taylor surround him until his eyes stop crying, until his body stops shaking, until his heart stops aching. And maybe it’s a long shot on that last one but it’s worth a try.

  
“Oettinger,” Dante finally says, the room quiet sans the sound of their breathing. “That’s who Jake is.”

  
“Your goalie,” Taylor says flatly, and Dante sighs because yeah, what a fucking cliche.

  
“You know, I stole his zip-up last year, and his hat. After we got home from worlds,” Dante sighs, trying not to think about all the times last spring he strolled around campus in Team USA gear that was just a little too big. “Probably should have clued me in then but him and Woll have always been tight. They used to be a thing, back in Michigan”.

  
“And you college boys call us cliches,” Mikey laughs, and it feels like the air gets just a little bit lighter as Dante bites out a “hey” back. “Look, I’m just saying, you're in love with your goalie who may or may not being banging the goalie of your biggest rival. Fuck, you could make a soap opera out of this shit. Not one I’d watch, but still”.

  
“You should call him,” Taylor says softly, as if approaching some frightened wild animal and well, maybe he is.

  
“He won’t pick up,” Dante sighs, because that’s a fact. USA hockey has just as strict phone policy as anyone else, and anyway, he’s with the boys.It wouldn’t matter that Dante’s not there.

  
“You should try,” Taylor says, slow and gentle. “Here, take Mikey's hoodie so you don’t get cold. The stairwell is three doors down.”

  
“Hey, you can’t just,” Mikey complains, falling silent when Taylor suggestively raises a single eyebrow in his direction. “Okay, yeah, take my hoodie. There should be a room key in the pocket if you want to get back in. Also,” he adds, “maybe knock first.” And then Taylor’s laughing and Dante’s getting up, pulling the hoodie on and heading for the door, ignoring the murmurings behind him, phone tucked tightly into the palm of his hand.

 

  
He goes to the stairwell, sliding against the thick concrete as he sinks to the ground. He can’t call. He won't. Not when he feels this cracked open, like an exposed nerve.

  
Instead, he settles for thumbing through Jake’s Instagram. First it’s only old pictures, and then more recent ones: Jake at the outdoor practice, BU collar poking out from the top of his Team USA gear, and then another from the game, the snow gathering on his back and numbers, the fucking Getty Image watermark still there cause god knows Jake was too lazy to hunt down a clean copy. He’s double tapping before he thinks otherwise, hitting home and closing out of the app before he can do something even dumber like comment.  
He’s resting his head against the ceiling when his phone buzzes, a single question mark from Jake, clearly in response to the impromptu Instagram spree.

 _Idk_ i _missed you bro_

Dante eventually types back, heart hammering in his chest and before he knows it his phone is ringing, Jake’s name flashing across the screen. He thinks about letting it ring through to voicemail. After all, what's he supposed to say? I’m sitting in a hotel stairwell at 10 minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve because i said your name mid-threesome and now i need to drown in my feelings and I can’t stop thinking about kissing you? Not fucking likely. It’s only at the last minute that he gives in, only because the prospect of saying no to Jake isn’t something that has ever occurred to him. But before he can change his mind the screen goes black, another text popping up a couple of seconds later.

_Miss you too, Let me know if you ever want to defect._

A startled laugh echoes down the stairwell and it takes Dante a second to realise that it’s his own. He sends back a single kissy face, a ring, and american flag. Maybe it’s too close to the truth too close to what he wants but it’s okay. Hiding in plain sight will just have to do for now.

 

 

It’s weird to live in fear of the inevitable. It’s even weirder from the inevitable not to transpire. When USA goes down to Sweden Dante’s already at the rink, Canada’s own game only a short while away. It’s Mikey that manages to tell him first, finding him midway through his pregame routine, earbuds stuffed in, hood pulled up in the back corner of the space near the Canadian dressing room.

  
“Hey Fabs, thought you should know the game’s over,” he says, “USA plays for bronze tomorrow.”

  
It’s such a strange feeling to simultaneously feel disappointed and relieved, because sure that's Jake, and so many of those boys are his boys but also the idea of facing them again in the final, of having to go home with one fewer medal than everyone else seemed like too much to bear, the weight of last year’s loss still hanging over the team with every passing second of the clock as it ticked down towards that final buzzer.

  
“Oh,” is what he says instead, and Mikey just smiles that small sad smile that he does sometimes and gently knocks Dante in the shoulder likes he gets it, like he's been there and come in second to his best friend before.

  
But still there's a game to play, the Czech Republic to beat. So Dante just shoots him a small smile back, pulls up his hood and shelves the tragedy that might be Mikey McLeod’s life for another day.

 

 

They win it. They win it all and Dante’s flying off the bench, Mikey hot on his heels and they head fly down the ice towards Carter and sure maybe it’s not his goalie in that net, but in this moment, Dante would honestly kiss Carter if he asked.

 

 

It feels like a millennium later that they all finally tumble into the locker room, blood still so flooded with adrenaline that it's almost like they’ve been drinking. They’re belting out Hey Baby at the top of their lungs and Dante’s not even going to pretend to apologise for the tears in his eyes. He’s heard the guys talk about it, of course, even if they tried not to do it in front of him. The high of winning, of draping your arms around your brothers’ shoulders and watching as your flag got raised overhead, the weight of a gold medal hanging solidly around your neck, proof that all your hard work had paid off.

  
There's a photo on his screen of him and Taylor and Mikey, the pair of them kissing his cheeks while he laughs, trying to push them off. He honestly doesn’t mean to send it, doesn’t mean to rub it in, but Jake sent him a text this morning that said bring home a matching one, so Dante barely thinks twice as he shoots it through on snapchat with the joking caption, “ _can these two not just kiss each other_ ”.

  
He loses track of his phone after that, somewhere between someone finally smuggling some beer into the room for them and what feels like 50 people pulling him in different directions at once, all of them smiling and laughing as they pile on the team bus heading for the room that Hockey Canada rented out for them.

 

 

It’s late when he finally sees it, half a dozen notifications from Jake on all his instagram posts and a snapchat.  
He almost doesn’t open it, but he's glad when he does. It’s badly lit and Dante can barely make out Jake's face but he's clearly pouting.

_Idk they seem to have the right idea_

And maybe it’s the beer in his system, maybe it’s the gold medal around his neck or maybe it’s Mikey and Taylor slow dancing in the corner of the room, both of them still with medals around their necks, both grinning softly unable to take their eyes off each other even as they fall backwards, almost tripping over a chair the two of them laughing softly to no one but each other.

_Do it when we get back_

Dante sends and before he thinks anymore about it thumbs out a second message before turning his phone to silent.

_They were a shitty threesome anyway I’d much rather just date you_

 

 

“You going to snap that,” Jake asks leaning against Dantes shoulder, glancing down at his phone. Its a photo of them kissing, Dantes spare hand that wasn’t holding his phone fisted in the grey material of Jakes hoody, the corners of Jakes mouth clearly turned up into a grin. Its a good photo all this considered and Dante can’t help but smile just looking at it.

  
“I don't know, how am I supposed to know you're serious about it,” he jokes tangling his fingers in the hair at the base of Jakes skull tugging his head up for another kiss.

  
“Excuse you, I’m the most serious about that, pull the camera up again and I’ll show you exactly how serious I am about this.”

  
Dante half expects Jake to kiss him again as he opens the camera on his phone holding it up in front of them, instead he crosses his arm and pull what is truly the worst serious face ever and Dante barely has time to hit the shutter button before both of them collapse in on each other, laughing as their foreheads bang and they topple backwards onto each other.

  
“I'm going to Instagram that you idiot,” Dante laughs, happy and fond and everything he thought he couldn’t have as presses a kiss against Jakes' forehead.

  
“Wait, let me caption it,” Jake asks, grabbing Dantes phone and twisting so he cant see the screen.

  
“If its fucking Hey Baby I will end you,” Dante laughs because god knows that all Jake has hummed since he got back, absolutely delighted by the idea that Mikey and Taylor chose it because Dante looked sad.

  
“Fuck you it's even better.” He laughs, throwing the phone back and he’s right and Dante can’t help but grin because yeah, this is better.

**Author's Note:**

> some #reciepts if thats your thing. 
> 
>  
> 
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